


at fault

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Hurt/Comfort, I'm still bad at tags sorry, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Whump, Prompt: doesn't realize they've been injured, Shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: written for BTHB prompt: doesn't realize they've been injured. lucifer takes trixie to the park but then must save her from danger-but at a cost to himself.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe Decker & Trixie Espinoza, Chloe Decker & Trixie Espinoza & Lucifer Morningstar, Trixie Espinoza & Lucifer Moningstar
Comments: 22
Kudos: 258





	at fault

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this is both my first fic for bad things happen bingo AND my first fic i've published for this fandom, so it may be a little wonky, but i hope you like it anyway!!   
> TW for mentions of a shooting!! the shooting itself is very minimally described but please be careful!

Everything had happened  _ way too fast. _ He’d been pushing Trixie on the swings, higher than the Detective would probably have liked, but she wasn’t there and the spawn had begged and pleaded, and who was he to say no? So he was pushing her higher and higher, and she was laughing and he could practically  _ feel  _ the grin that was splitting her face, and. Well. It made him feel nice. Happy, even. Her pure joy was infectious, and he found himself begin to smile too, wondering vaguely if this was what it was like to be simply  _ human, _ and-

And then there was a gunshot. And another. And another. A figure in a black mask holding some sort of rifle strode through the entrance to the playground, and continued to pull the trigger. Screams rose through the air, and Lucifer plucked Trixie from the swing by the back of her t-shirt and spun to shield her with his body. He started to run- _ away _ was the only direction his mind was capable of producing, and he sprinted for the back edge of the playground, opposite the entrance and the shooter. He jumped over the fairly small wall that surrounded the playground on all sides, but his foot must have caught on the edge of it, because he (and Trixie, by extension) went tumbling down unelegantly across the wall, and he hastily threw himself into a poor imitation of a roll, slamming his right shoulder into the ground but keeping Trixie out of harm’s way. He was on his feet immediately, running far faster than a human in his position would be able to, but he had no idea where he was going: still, the only thing on his mind was  _ away. _

Trixie was trying to talk to him, but he could barely hear her over the pounding of his thoughts and his heart. He might have taken a second to wonder  _ why  _ he could barely hear her, but if he did, the memory of doing so was gone immediately after he did it.

He didn’t stop running until he heard sirens in the distance and they were several blocks away. He ducked behind a service yard in a move he wouldn’t exactly call trespassing, since he  _ was  _ running for his (Trixie’s) life.

He didn’t let go of Trixie until she coughed and muttered, “Lucifer, you’re squishing me,” at which he immediately released her from his grip. He closed his eyes for a second and felt Trixie settle herself next to him, pressing her body into his right side. He raised his arm to drape it around her shoulders protectively, which made something, a muscle perhaps, in that general area pull painfully. He was wondering how that was possible when the Detective wasn’t anywhere close by when Trixie pulled away from him with a horrified sound somewhere between a gasp and a squeak.

He turned to look at her, right arm dropping to the ground, and nearly passed out at the sight that greeted him-her entire left side was covered in blood, bright red and wet, and there was  _ too much of it, _ far too much, and  _ how had he not realized she was bleeding until now?  _ He frantically fumbled for his phone, but his arm wasn’t cooperating and his phone was  _ just there _ in his pocket but he couldn’t get to it. Trixie reached into his pocket and got it for him, before he could stop her, warn her against moving her injury. “Trixie!” he shouted.

She interrupted whatever he was about to say. “It’s broken. Lucifer, your phone’s broken, what are we gonna do?”

“ _ You’re _ not going to do anything, Trixie. You are going to sit right here and apply pressure to your wound, and I am going to go find help.”

She looked at him confusedly, and  _ no, no, she’d lost too much blood, she couldn’t understand what he was saying to her- _

“I’m not hurt, Lucifer.”

It took a second for him to comprehend what she had just said. 

“What?”

“I’m all bloody, but it’s not my blood, it’s yours, can’t you feel it? You’ve...you’ve been shot.” Her little voice sounded far too grave to be coming out of her mouth, and the words she was saying took a minute to sink into his brain. 

“Shit.”

Trixie gasped. “We’re not supposed to say that word!”

“Under the circumstances, it’s allowed,” he replied, and then, before he could think the better of it, he shoved himself to his feet with a groan.

Which was a monumentally stupid idea, of course. He barely bit back a scream of pain as he felt the pain in his side in all its intensity for the first time. He leaned back into the side of the service yard, then steeled himself and pushed slowly off of it. 

“Trixie, I have a very important job for you.”

She looked at him, her eyes terrified but determined. “What is it?”

“I need you to look down the street and tell me if you recognize where we are.”

Trixie nodded and ran off, returning seconds later. “We made it almost home,” she reported. “I can see my house at the end of the street.” She thought for a second. “It was a good idea to come this way, or we could have ended up way far away.”

Lucifer nodded distractedly, not bothering to tell her it was pure luck that they ended up so close to her home. “Let’s get going, then.”

“Are you okay? Can you walk all the way there?”

He nodded. “Got us this far, didn’t I?”

As it turns out, however, it’s a lot easier to move when you’ve been shot if you haven’t  _ realized  _ you’ve been shot. Any adrenaline that was in his system had worn off, and every step was pure agony. Trixie was doing her best to keep him from falling, but she was a small girl and he was a tall man, so they swayed dangerously from side to side as they made their way slowly down the sidewalk. 

They were perhaps halfway there when his vision started to go fuzzy and he swayed dangerously to the left. Trixie valiantly attempted to push him upright again, but this time his stumble was too big to correct, and he collapsed to the ground. He stayed there for a second, senses fading in and out, until he heard Trixie crying, begging him to get up. 

He struggled to his feet, feeling the wound in his side pound in time with his heart. It hurt like few things he’d experienced before, and he wanted nothing more than to crumple once more to the ground and scream until he couldn’t feel anything anymore, but Trixie was there and desperately pulling on his left arm to keep him moving, so he  _ had  _ to keep moving, for her, and the only noise that escaped him was a short, high-pitched whimper that hardly encompassed the volume of pain that he was in. 

Trixie’s grip on his left hand tightened, and she pulled him along harder still, resolutely not looking back at him, but stating firmly, “You’re gonna be fine, okay?”

“Mm.”

“You’re  _ gonna  _ be fine,” she repeated. “You have to, Lucifer.” There was real panic in her voice, and it was this which forced an answer out of him.

“Of course I will be.”

“I  _ know. _ ”

The rest of their agonizingly slow walk was spent in silence, save for Trixie’s occasional insistence of “come _on,_ ” and Lucifer’s occasional whimper of pain. It occurred to him at some point that both of them were terrified, and that it was _all his fault. He_ was the one who got shot. _He_ was the one that even took Trixie to the park to begin with. _He_ had done this to her, _he_ had scared her. It was _his fault_.

Before he could think anymore on this troubling topic, Trixie announced that they’d arrived-but there was a problem.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Mommy’s car isn’t here.”

_ How could he have been so stupid?  _ Of course the second the Detective heard there was a shooting at the park her daughter was at she would have left! Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“‘Cause you got shot, duh.”

Had he said that out loud?

“Yeah.”

Oh.

He tried to think of what they needed to do, but it was hard with a lot of his blood missing. He had finally decided that the thing to do was break in when he looked down to Trixie and found she was gone, and the door was open.

Ah.

“-okay, just please hurry,” Trixie was saying to someone over the phone. She hung up and turned around as Lucifer pulled the door shut behind him.

“It was unlocked,” she said. “You kinda spaced out.”

“I was thinking.”

“You have to lay down.”

“What?”

“That’s what the lady said.”

“What lady?”

“The 911 lady. She said to make you lay down and put your feet up and...and apply pressure to the wound. So go lay on the couch.”

He obliged without really thinking, and Trixie shoved a throw pillow under his feet. “Now just push real hard on your side where you got shot.”

“That sounds painful.”

“The lady said to do it, so you have to,” Trixie insisted. “She said they would come as quick as they can, but it could be a while.”

Lucifer pushed a hand into his side. As expected, it hurt, and he was about to pass out from the pain when he remembered something important-“the Detective! Trixie, you have to call your mother right now and tell her you’re okay.”

Trixie nodded and picked up the phone again. Lucifer, deciding everything was mostly taken care of, closed his eyes. 

He woke up a second later to frantic little hands slapping his face. “Lucifer! The lady said not to let you fall asleep!”

He blinked his eyes open. “‘M awake.”

“Good. Mommy’s going to be here soon, I told her what happened and she said to do exactly what the 911 lady said. So you can’t go to sleep.”

He nodded slightly, which made him far dizzier than he thought it should have. “Wonder why this happened,” he muttered, on the edge of unconsciousness but not giving in to it. “Why did I bleed, if the Detective wasn’t there?”

“You got shot, that’s why,” Trixie said, as though it was that simple. He was about to explain why it was  _ not  _ that simple when the door banged open and Chloe rushed in, the frantic look on her face subsiding as she laid eyes on her daughter, who looked up to her but made no move to leave her position next to the couch.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, Mommy, I already told you that, but you have to help Lucifer, he’s  _ not supposed to fall asleep!” _ Those last few words were directed at Lucifer himself, and came with another slap to the face. “You have to stay awake, remember?”

He forced his eyes open again and looked up. “Hello, Detective.”

Chloe quickly stepped over to the couch and dropped to her knees beside his head. “Where were you shot?”

“Side...right side.”

She moved away from his head and swiftly cut away his jacket and shirt with scissors he hadn’t even seen her grab. He turned his head to look at the wound, and found himself staring at quite a large quantity of his own blood, smeared across his skin and still bubbling up from the wound. 

He quickly looked away, swallowing back nausea, and Chloe chose that moment to press his shirt firmly into the wound, in a proper application of the words “apply pressure.”

He could only groan quietly at the pain. “Hurts…” he managed to say, squeezing his eyes shut as though that would stop the pain.

A hand ran through his sweaty hair, blissfully cool against his forehead. “I know,” Chloe said, her voice a reassuring, gentle tone that he recognized as being the same one she frequently adopted when Trixie had been frightened, or when someone brought in for questioning was nervous. She’d rarely used it on him. It made him feel safe.

It didn’t make anything hurt less, though. She pressed on the wound harder still, and he couldn’t stop the tears that leaked from his eyes. 

A small hand, sticky with his own blood, reached out and brushed them away. Trixie looked at him and offered a small smile. “You’re being very brave,” she said, echoing words that she’d heard doctors say to her before. “We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”

He, too, managed a smile at that. “Thanks, Trixie.”

A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived. Lucifer was not particularly keen on the idea of going to the hospital, but it wasn’t as though he had much choice in the matter, so he kept his mouth shut and let the voices of the paramedics, Chloe, and Trixie float over him as he was loaded carefully onto a gurney. 

He attempted to think about what was going to happen-would the Detective stay while he was getting surgery, making him vulnerable the whole time? Or would she leave, and the doctors be presented with a baffling case of self-healing?  _ Or  _ would she leave, and would he remain vulnerable? After all, he’d been shot well out of range of her, so who was to say what was happening?

He didn’t get beyond thinking of these three possible outcomes before he lost consciousness once again.

The next time he woke up, he was in bed. Not  _ his  _ bed, he noticed immediately. A hospital bed, small and uncomfortable. He lifted his right arm experimentally, noting a slight pull in his side which was unaccompanied by pain. 

He was about to see if he could get out of his rather horrible bed when he realized he wasn’t alone-curled up in two chairs next to the bed were Chloe and Trixie, the latter now in clean, unbloodied clothes, both asleep. 

He smiled at them, and at the idea that they had  _ stayed _ , stayed  _ for him. _

_ I should call Amenadiel, _ he thought, then remembered that his phone had been broken. 

“Chloe,” he said, and winced at the rough feeling that speaking brought to his throat. “Chloe,” he tried again, when she didn’t stir. “Detective!” he said, louder. Finally, she sat upright and looked at him. “Detective Decker, may I please borrow your phone?”   
She handed it over silently, then gently shook Trixie’s shoulder. The girl opened her eyes slowly, then jumped out of her seat when she saw Lucifer awake. 

“Easy, honey, he’s on the phone right now,” Chloe warned her. Trixie nodded and sat down patiently.

Lucifer explained his situation to Amenadiel as best as he could given his audience, providing vague answers to his brother’s questions of  _ was there any chance Chloe was nearby, were they some kind of special bullets, do you know if she was there the whole time you were getting stitched up… _

After deciding he’d talked to Amenadiel enough, Lucifer hung up, then turned to Chloe and Trixie. Trixie leapt up from her seat once again, throwing her arms around him as best she could, jostling his injury a little, but not enough to hurt. He carefully picked her up and let her settle next to him on the bed, an echo of their positions earlier, but less painful and less bloody. 

“I’m going to get the doctor,” Chloe announced, standing up. “And see if I can get you some water, too. Your voice sounds terrible.”

“Why, thank you, Detective. So kind.”

She smiled at him in fond exasperation before leaving the room.

“Does it hurt?” Trixie asked.

“No, not really. Wonder what kind of drugs they gave me…”

Trixie ignored his speculation. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad you’re okay, Lucifer.”

He nodded somewhat absentmindedly.  _ I’m glad you’re okay. _ As though him being okay was what really mattered, when Trixie could have been shot just as easily as he had been, she could have died, and it would have been  _ his fault,  _ he could have  _ killed  _ her, and here  _ she  _ was glad that  _ he  _ was okay!

He expressed all of these thoughts in a simple, uncharacteristic, “sorry.”

Trixie looked up at him. “Sorry for what?”

“All...this. Putting you in danger.”

“You...didn’t do that?” 

Trust a child to not understand the complexities of being at fault!

“I brought you to the park, Trixie.”

“Yeah? I go to the park all the time.”

“But this time…”

“You didn’t make that person come.”

“No, but I  _ brought  _ you.” _ Why couldn’t she understand? _

Chloe returned just as Trixie stated, rather angrily, that, “it doesn’t  _ matter, _ Lucifer. Besides, nothing even happened to me anyway.”

“What doesn’t matter?” Chloe asked, handing Lucifer a paper cup of water. “The doctor will be here in just a minute to talk to you, by the way.”

“Lucifer says he put me in danger.”

Chloe looked at him, not angry, not yet. Just questioning. 

“But he didn’t!” Trixie quickly added. “He saved me! He picked me up and ran, and he even got  _ shot _ !”

“Did you put her in danger, Lucifer?”

He looked up at her with shining, guilty eyes. “Of course I did, Detective. I brought her to the park and there was someone with a  _ gun! _ ”

Chloe sighed. “Trixie, can you go get a snack from the vending machines at the end of the hall?”

“Can I have money?”

Chloe handed her more money than was necessary for a trip to a vending machine, and Trixie scampered off, with a quick promise of “I’ll bring you something too, Lucifer!”

As soon as her daughter was out of the room, Chloe rounded on him. He shut his eyes and braced himself for her wrath.

Except...it didn’t come? She carefully sat on the edge of the bed and put a gentle, soft hand on the side of his face. 

“Lucifer...I don’t even know where to begin. You protect my daughter from a gunman, getting  _ shot  _ in the process and not even slowing down, and you have the  _ audacity  _ to sit here and apologize for putting her in danger? Lucifer, you saved her! You did nothing to hurt her at all, maybe you scared her a little when she realized you’d been _ shot, _ but Lucifer, you. did. not. put. her. in. danger.” 

“But…”

“No. You do not blame yourself for the actions of someone else. You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen when you took Trixie to the  _ park. _ ”

He took a shaky breath. A tear rolled down his face, and he tried very hard to ignore it, but another followed it, and then another, and Chloe stood up from the bed and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Not your fault,” she whispered. 

Trixie chose that moment to step back into the room, her arms loaded with chips and candy bars. She set them carefully on a chair, then picked out a bag of chips and turned to Lucifer to ask what he would like.

“Why are you crying?”

He hastily swiped a hand under his eyes. “I’m not.”

Trixie frowned and climbed onto the bed. “Yes you are.”

“It’s nothing.”

Trixie thought for a second, looking to her mother.  _ It’s okay,  _ Chloe mouthed to her. Trixie nodded and once again curled herself into the space beside Lucifer, opening her chips. 

“You wanna hear about this guy I saw at the vending machines? He was wearing two different shoes and his shirt was backwards!”

Trixie continued telling Lucifer all about the vending machine man. He smiled lightly as she spoke, feeling his eyes drift shut. 

Chloe smiled at the pair: Trixie, still talking, but softly, in acknowledgement of Lucifer’s tired state, and Lucifer himself, eyes softly closed and a contented smile on his face, breathing deeply and evenly. She had never seen him look so peaceful, so young, so...completely  _ human.  _ It was nice.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! my idea for this was that basically, once lucifer gets close to trixie, he becomes vulnerable around her too, which obviously isn't canon or anything, but i hope it was ok!!! please feel free to let me know what you think!! (also i know the ending is bad i just can't write endings for shit lol)


End file.
